Going Shopping… part 1

A trawl of Ebay has thrown up a few bits and bobs. I’m watching a pair of overpriced new M756 XT hubs which the seller won’t shift at the current asking price (I’ll make him an offer near the end of the auction), and there were a couple of Hope XC rear hubs, one of which, with 36 holes, I bought for £29 perhaps against my better judgement (see previous posts). That may turn out to be a mistake!

Also a couple of the online retailers have some good deals on the old M756 XT disc hubs (both 32h and 36h), one of which, whom I’ve refused to patronise since they tried to rip me off in the past, will be tough to beat. A moral dilemma there!

A couple of days later and I’ve won the Ebay XT hubs: brand new, with skewers, 32 holes! The seller had wanted £46 but you can get them from the shops for less than that, so I sent him a message pointing that out and offering the £35 – he accepted without haggling! Fantastic, those will form the basis for the budget wheelset, so now for some matching rims.

A positive response to a “Wanted” ad on the STW classifieds has yielded a brand new 36 hole Mavic F519, the predecessor to the XM719 and exactly what I’m after for the utility wheels! Matching it could be a problem, as the seller had a second one which was unfortunately damaged, but for £15 it’s a good start.

Also from the same ad I’ve been offered a pair of Sun CR18 rims, which is interesting but I don’t know anything about them, and the Sun Ringle website turns out to be pretty useless. The seller seems to know less about them than I do which is never a good sign. He wants £35 for them anyway, which is more than Bike Dock sell them for new, and my offer of £20 didn’t go down well so forget that!

Amazingly, there’s also rim on Ebay that appears to match the STW F519, so I’ve offered the seller £15 – he accepts! I’ve only been thinking about project for a week or so and if I take the hubs from the on-line retailers I’ve already found matching 36 hole hubs & rims in the exact specification I was after and at good prices too. I’m amazed how easy it’s been and reckon I’ve been more than a little fortunate. Time to work out the spoke lengths: for that I need some rim & hub dimensions and a spoke length calculator…